An Approach for Antigen-Agnostic Identification of Virus-Like Particle-Displayed Epitopes that Engage Specific Antibody V Gene Regions

Julianne Peabody; Susan B Core; Larance Ronsard; Daniel Lingwood; David S Peabody; Bryce Chackerian

doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-3469-1_4

An Approach for Antigen-Agnostic Identification of Virus-Like Particle-Displayed Epitopes that Engage Specific Antibody V Gene Regions

Methods Mol Biol. 2024:2720:55-74. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3469-1_4.

Authors

Julianne Peabody¹, Susan B Core¹, Larance Ronsard², Daniel Lingwood², David S Peabody¹, Bryce Chackerian³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
² The Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³ Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM, USA. BChackerian@salud.unm.edu.

PMID: 37775657
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3469-1_4

Abstract

Antibody complementarity determining regions (CDRs) participate in antigen recognition, but not all participate equally in antigen binding. Here we describe a technique for discovering strong, specific binding partners to defined motifs within the CDRs of chimeric, engineered antibodies using affinity selection and counter-selection of epitopes displayed on bacteriophage MS2-based virus-like particles (VLPs). As an example, we show how this technique can be used to identify families of VLPs that interact with antibodies displaying the CDRs encoded by the germline precursor of a broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibody against HIV-1.

Keywords: Affinity selection; Bacteriophage MS2; Complementarity determining region (CDR); Phage display; Virus-like particles.